Jack Herer’s Book

The Emperor Wears No Clothes

The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Chapter 16

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Alternatives to Prohibition

In conclusion, we see that the government’s case against marijuana is woven of transparent lies. In this chapter, we bring to light some research that the government does not like the people to know about. Then we talk about some realistic alternatives.

But first, a brief fable:

The Story of the Emperor’s New Clothes

There once was a very very vain and terrible King/Emperor who heavily taxed his subjects in order to pay for his incredibly fine wardrobe made from the most expensive clothing.

One day, two swindlers, representing themselves as great tailors from afar, arrived and sought an audience with the Emperor. They told of an amazing new fabric they had invented, made of a very expensive gold fiber that only the best, purest, and wisest of people could see. Excited, the Emperor asked to see a sample, and the men brought forth an empty spool. "Ah, isn’t it lovely?" they asked the Emperor.

The Emperor agreed, afraid to admit that he did not see anything because that would mean he was a dull and stupid person.

So, to test his ministers, the Emperor brought them all in to get their opinions. Once the power of the fabric was explained to them, all agreed that this was, indeed, the finest and most beautiful cloth in the world.

The vain Emperor ordered a new outfit be made for him, so the phony tailors took his measurements. The Emperor ordered the gold from the treasury be given to the supposed tailors to be spun into thread. They set about at once working day after day, pretending to cut and sew, while the Emperor and his ministers periodically came by to admire their handiwork and to pay the enormous bills the merchants were running up in the course of their activities.

Finally, the big day came when all the people in the land were ordered gathered to see the Emperor’s new outfit, which they had paid so much for and heard so much about.

When he nakedly strode forth, all the people looked in disbelief and said nothing. Then they sang the praises of the miraculous new cloth. "It’s the most beautiful work I’ve ever seen!" "Magnificent!" "I wish I had such lovely fabric!" They all cheered, afraid of being denounced and called stupid and impure if they did otherwise.

And the Emperor proudly paraded in front of his subjects, secretly worried afraid that he would lose the crown if the people knew that he, himself, could not see the cloth that draped his body.

Until he passed through the crowd, a small boy perched on his father’s shoulder, in his innocence cried out, "But the Emperor has nothing on!"

"Just hear what the innocent says!" said the father. And each person whispered to another what the child had said. The word spread throughout his subjects what the little boy had said.

Then, everyone knew that the Emperor and all his ministers had been tricked by swindlers. Now his guards and ministers, as well as the people, realized that the swindlers had not only tricked the Emperor, but he, the Emperor, had spent all their tax money, wasted on this farce.

The Emperor heard the people murmuring. He knew they were right, but he was too proud to admit he was wrong and had been made the fool. So he drew himself up to his full height and stared down at his guards, until he caught one guard’s eye.

The guard, looking around nervously, realizing this vain Emperor could have him imprisoned or even beheaded, averted his eyes and looked down at the ground. Then another guard, seeing that he wasn’t laughing anymore, got scared and lowered his eyes to the ground, too. Soon, all the guards, ministers, and even the children pretending to carry his invisible train of gold cloth, were staring at the ground.

The people, seeing the ministers and guards, who a moment ago were laughing at the Emperor with them, now staring at the ground, quaking in their boots, stopped laughing and quickly bowed their heads as well.

The little boy who had first exclaimed that the Emperor was naked, seeing all the grown-ups around him, and even his father, completely scared and subdued, bowed his head in fear!

Then the Emperor, pulling himself up to his full height, announced to his subjects, as he marched proudly through his kingdom, "Who is to say that these are not the very finest clothes of all?" The Emperor held his head high and looked down his nose at the crowd determined to save his royal face from public humiliation. The Emperor continued his procession acting as though he were oblivious to his nakedness, and his ministers held the train of his invisible cloak higher than ever. The people looked on in disbelief and did nothing as the Emperor and his ministers kept marching down the street parading their naked ignorance.

* Paraphrased from Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale.

The Moral of the Story is:

We cannot simply call the Emperor (U.S. government) on his (its) acts of deceit and manipulation of fact. His guards (FBI, CIA, DEA, etc.) are far too powerful. His fear of shameful discovery so great he ceaselessly uses his power (through funding much of the United Nation’s and the world’s anti-drug crusades) to buy allegiance through bribery and intimidation (foreign aid, arms sales, etc.).

Those American citizens who would dare speak out against this tyranny are often slandered as "druggies" or "dopers" and may be threatened with the loss of their jobs, income, families, and property. To win, we must drive a stake through the heart of (the U.S. government’s/DEA’s) lies, over and over and over again by hammering at them relentlessly with hard-core facts to defeat the evil of this hard-hearted Emperor (unjust cannabis laws) and even imprison these perpetrators, if necessary, to set our people free!

The Logical Analogy

We contend that America’s marijuana/hemp laws are like the Emperor’s clothes! Like tyrants and prohibitionists in the past, this Emperor relies on brute force, intimidation, fear, and a police state to maintain his authoritarian, despotic reign while draining the federal treasury and dismantling all vestiges of the Bill of Rights while imprisoning innocent souls.

Our great country was founded on the principles that each person has "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that each person has the responsibility of maintaining these rights by casting her or his individual ballot.

It is a criminal offense for officials or executives of the U.S. government to direct or conspire to wage a deliberate campaign of misinformation, omission of fact, and outright lies with our tax dollars.

On the subject of cannabis, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and now even Bill Clinton, have acted the part of the Emperor. We might add that Nancy Reagan has acted the part of the evil and ruthless Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland who decreed, "Sentence now verdict later!"

Past and present Drug Czars Carlton Turner, William Bennett, Bill Martinez, Lee Brown, and now General Barry McCaffrey acting the parts of the Emperor’s advisors, have all upheld the fallacy of the "pure fabric that only the purest eyes may see," woven for them originally by Anslinger/DuPont/Hearst and their malevolent police-state bureaucrats. Now it is co-maintained by energy, pharmaceutical, alcohol/beer companies, drug rehab professionals, drug testers, police, prison guards, and prison builders all with enormous financial interests and police-state motives.

When agents of the U.S. government deliberately act or conspire this way be they President, Vice President, National Drug Czar, head of the DEA, FBI, or CIA they should be imprisoned. And in an honest American society, they would be held accountable for the 14 million years they’ve already sentenced so many Americans for the "crime" of pot.

Our Federal bureaucracies and the U.S. Supreme Court are rapidly chipping away at our freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights (written on hemp paper). Hemp/marijuana has become their principal excuse for taking away our guaranteed Constitutional rights more so than all other crimes, police actions, insurgencies, strikes, uprisings, and wars in the last 200 years combined! And the loss basic freedoms is even worse in our satellite Central and South American countries, where their leaders have acted at America’s official behest.

What does it mean to drive a plant species to extinction? Who will forgive us if we allow these greedy tyrants to destroy America and perhaps life on Earth?

At coffee shops like the Bulldog Palace in Amsterdam, one can quietly ponder these issues as you smoke your choice from a wide selection of marijuana and hashish samples.

In Conclusion:

Truth or Consequences of Prohibition

When DuPont tells you that they bring "Better Living Through Chemistry", they don’t tell you that it’s only for 100 years, then the entire planet dies for their profit.

England and Holland treat their substance abusers as human beings keeping them supplied with enough affordable medicants so they don’t disrupt the activities of others. Such policies allow them to lead otherwise productive and normal lives. These policies are now firmly established, effective, and popular in those countries. In the mid-1900s, Switzerland began its own experiments in localized tolerance of public drug use.

When the Swiss tried, in 1997, to recriminalize cannabis with a ballot initiative, it lost by 79% of the vote!

So, why should otherwise peaceful hemp/marijuana growers and users be labeled and persecuted as lifetime criminals while 35% of all robberies and burglaries are committed by heroin and alcohol addicts, 40-55% of murders, rapes, and highway fatalities are alcohol related* and heroin is more available in jail than on the streets? Yet cannabis users statistically have the same or lower incidents of crime and violence as the non-cannabis-using population as a whole.

* FBI Statistics, 1993, 1996.

In fact, aside from cannabis usage, take the mob and the dealers out of heroin and other drugs and you reduce as much as 80% of non-alcohol related crime. As a direct example, throughout the "Roaring Twenties" era of alcohol prohibition, the murder rate rose consistently, then dropped every year for the next 10 following prohibition’s 1933 repeal.* * FBI Statistics.

Let’s find another way to deal with drug usage or be prepared for continued exponential erosion of our freedoms, including the rigths of self-expression, public debate, and a free press, including books and songs.

Accept the fact that all drug-related crime ends if you treat addicts and users instead of removing them from society. Help tem, educate and encourage them be financially productive.

In 1999, the top priority of the U.S. government, Newt Gingrich and most of the Republican Party is to try to enact legislation that will automatically take away 100% of all citizens’ rights to privacy and freedom from unwarranted search as if the drug war were a true state of emergency in order to further their fascistic, police, and prison-state agenda.

High-Tech Repression

In order for America to be marijuana free, all of us, smokers and non-smokers alike, will have to give up our Bill of Rights forever! You will have to conform to the likes of Lyndon LaRouche, Jerry Falwell, Nancy Reagan, Edwin Meese, William Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and minds of that ridiculous ilk. Each, in their smug ignorance, contributing to the permanent poisoning of the Earth while trying with all their might to completely annihilate the one thing that can save us: hemp.

The computer, that great boon to humankind, will ironically allow the police to finish, today, the job the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition started (see Chapter 10: Dark Ages) because the church could not stand the "commoners" laughing at them, or knowing the secrets of, among other things, hygiene, astronomy, and hemp. Using computers, the pot police can peer into an individual’s family background, his or her sales receipts, income taxes, and so forth to enable them to blackmail and/or bribe Americans as well as detroy their politicians, judges, and other VIPs by exposing issues like their private sex lives or personal drug use.

For example, the son of Clinton’s former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, was systematically and perpetually badgered, over six months, by his friend (who had been previously busted and forced to work undercover for the DEA, specifically to set up young Elders) to get him to purchase a small amount of cocaine for himself. Elder’s son, who had never been known to deal, consistently refused, but eventually gave in to the friend’s constant pressure.

The government revealed the information about this transaction to no one for another six months until they could use it to directly blackmail Surgeon General Elders into recanting her soft stance on medical cannabis. Instead, refusing to be silenced, Elders resigned. With such blatantly underhanded tactics, the DEA is daily bringing us closer to Orwell’s 1984 nightmare.

A postscript: as of this writing, young Elders is still appealing his case on grounds of entrapment.

Wasting our Tax Money

Approximately 50% of all drug enforcement money, federal and state, during the last 60 years has been directed toward marijuana!

Some 70-80% of all persons now in federal and state prisons in America wouldn’t have been there as criminals until just 60 or so years ago. In other words we, in our (Anslinger and Hearst inspired) ignorance and prejudice, have placed approximately 800,000 of the 1.2 million people in American prisons (as of August 4, 1998) for crimes that were, at worst, minor habits, up until the Harrison Act, 1914 (whereby the U.S. Supreme Court in 1924 first ruled that drug addicts weren’t sick, they were instead vile criminals).

Eighty percent of these government "War on Drugs" victims were not dealing. They have been incarcerated for simple possession. And this does not include the quarter of a million more in county jails.

Remember, just 20 years ago, in 1978, before the "War on Drugs," there were only 300,000 persons in American prisons for all crimes combined.

Some radio and television preachers have added to the hysteria by calling rock music "satanic and voodoo" and associating it with the drug culture. They want to outlaw rock, burn albums and books, and lock up everyone who doesn’t agree with them. So does Carlton Turner. So does Lyndon LaRouche. So does William Bennet. So does Lee Brown. So does General Barry McCaffrey.

During the last three generations, Hearst’s and Anslinger’s propaganda and lies have been relentlessly jammed down Americans’ throats as unimpeachable gospel truth resulting in the massive drain on taxpayer’s money to build the government’s anti-drug machine (see "Fighting the Police State" in the Appendix of the paper version of this book).

And virtually every state is in the midst of the biggest prison expansion ever in America’s and the world’s history, while political vultures, concerned only for growth of their prison-related industries and job security, demand that we build more prisons and expand tax bases to pursue this "law and order" madness against formerly misdemeanor or even non-existent offenses.

Double Standards

In the 1980s, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist (now Chief Justice) was "nodding off" in Court and sending other druggies to prison for their habits he just kept feeding his "eight-a-day" Placidyl habit. This was the equivalent in dollars, "high," and mental effect of a $70 to $125 a-day street abuser’s heroin habit.

Placidyl, a cousin of Quaaludes, is known as a "heavy down," popular on the streets for imparting a very placid feeling in users.

The physical dependency and mental effects of using the legal drugs Placidyl, Dilaudad, Quaaludes, et al., are virtually the same as for the reviled barbiturates, opium, morphine, and heroin. In essence, they disturb the body’s "endorphin" (pain-receptors and nullifiers) balance.

Rehnquist, who was said to have used Placidyl far in excess of normal limits, did not rob liquor stores, physically assault his fellow citizens, or commit any of the anti-social behaviors attributed to "junkies."

His habit was easily maintained because the Placidyl was both legally available and within his normal income limits. Placidyl was also well labeled as to purity and frequency of dosage, while persons with outlawed drug habits have to get by on a "dime of tar" (a 10 dollar bag), the purity of which whether 5% or 95%Is unknown and dangerous estimate. The great majority of drug overdoses are caused by unknown, unregulated, and unlabeled purity factor.

The government also acknowledges that 90% or more of overdoses by illegal drugs would probably be avoided with accurate labels and appropriate warnings.

Policies Based on Ignorance

While researching this book over the last 24 years, we talked with and questioned senators, legislators, judges, police, DAs, scientists, historians, Nobel Prize winners, dentists, and MDs. All knew little bits and pieces of the history and uses of cannabis, but virtually no one knew any depth about marijuana in its 360-degree entirety except long-term medical researchers, such as Ungerlieder, Mikuriya, et al; and writers like Ed Rosenthal, Dean Latimer, and Dr. Michael Aldrich, et al.

For example, 15 years ago, at a large California NORML fundraiser in February 1983, we spoke privately with then Senate Majority Whip Tom Rutherford, of New Mexico. He has been a leading pro-marijuana politician for a decade and was, at that time, probably the most knowledgeable elected government representative on the subject of marijuana, in the United States. We asked him why the government didn’t just come out and legalize marijuana, especially with everything we knew medically, industrially, and historically about cannabis.

We were shocked when he replied that he was not aware of any argument in favor of the legalization of marijuana, except to end the lunacy of criminalization for at worst a minor act.

So, we enthusiastically outlined the facts and entire history of hemp/marijuana to him, figuring he must have heard some of it before. He sat literally in awe of what he was hearing for the very first time. When we finished speaking, he said, "If I had that knowledge outlined and documented for me as you just told it, the government, police, and judicial system would be through persecuting pot."

"But is it true?" he added

This was in February 1983 and here were America’s top pro-pot politicians who literally didn’t know enough about hemp to fill a single page of a book, and some left office in the Reagan "just say no" era before having learned enough to publicly support hemp/marijuana.

But now, many do know hemp is potentially the Earth’s number-one crop and that the present laws are unjustifiable, and that the government’s position on pot is utterly false and can’t stand the simple light of truth.

What is the Law?

"All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at." Spinoza, (c. 1660)

To control marijuana is to give up our freedoms, for ourselves, our kids, and our kid’s kids, forever.

And that, my friends, is called fascism; and simply put, if the laws on cannabis are not overturned, and if present Earth-destructive practices, such as strip mining, oil drilling, clear-cutting of trees, industrial pollution of waters, and use of pesticides and herbicides are not discontinued, our planet will soon die at the hands of these ignorant (not-knowing and/or evil) politicians who think they have a right to pass more and more Draconian laws to fill more and bigger prisons and jails with some of our most decent citizens. These same politicians portray themselves as being motivated purely out of concern for children. Meanwhile, they promote the massive ongoing environmental poisoning of these same children every day!

But to truly understand why tens of millions of decent Americans are scared silly of pot after 60 years of disinformation that continues to this day, consider the mentality and character of former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (1978-1992), who has admitted to helping direct a program of squashing accurate hemp information and ordering the arrest and harassment of California Marijuana Initiative workers for doing their civic and Constitutional duty to collect petition signatures.

In September 1983, on television and through a police spokesman, Gates called hemp reform advocates "well-intentioned but terribly naive regarding marijuana and [they] really don’t know much about it."

In January, 1984, Gates was asked by a parent at a San Fernando Valley, CA, public school, "What can I do if I find out my child has used marijuana?" He replied, "It’s too late. Once they’ve smoked one marijuana cigarette, they are lost to us forever!"*

* These exact words were also used by LA County D.A. Ira Reiner in his 1990 campaign for State Attorney General. He lost.

A few months later, the then-California attorney general, John Van de Kamp, suppressed the August 17, 1990, report by his own advisory panel that called for hemp re-legalization. Gates testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on September 5, 1990, that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot." He held to this position for almost a week, until public outcry for his dismissal* forced him to modify his comment to a call for stricter penalties. Former Drug Czar William Bennett said, "I have no problem with beheading marijuana users, only legal ones (in beheading them)" and one Mississippi legislator said in 1998 that marijuana punishment should include severing of hands, arms, feet, and legs (seriously!).

A few months later, on March 3, 1991, the world was shocked to learn that Gates’ officers were indeed capable of such brutal and heinous behavior when the video of Los Angeles police officers savagely beating a defenseless Rodney King (accused of speeding abd evading capture) was revealed to the world. A urine test later revealed traces of THC. Gates continued to back his officers in the beating, through the time of the riots.

* Reiner was almost the only official to publicly support Gates.

In July of 1998, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, on a fact-finding mission to Europe, added insult to ignorance by proclaiming to a Stockholm audience, "The murder rate in Holland [where "soft" drugs are treated as a legal product] is double that in the United States.That’s drugs." Actually, the American murder rate is 8.2 per 100,000. The Dutch murder rate is 1.7 per 100,000, less than one-fourth that of the U.S.

This was only the latest in McCaffrey’s continuing stream of ludicrous misinformation. In December 1996, for example, he had been quoted in the media as saying, "There’s not one shred of evidence that marijuana has medicinal value"

Conclusion

On the basis of the information provided in this book, we demand an end to the enforcement of these prohibition laws. All laws regarding the cultivation of the plant must be stricken from the books, including the UN’s Single Convention Treaty of 1961, at which Anslinger represented the United States. Although he was forced to retire by an angry President Kennedy for, among other things, his antics at the Convention, Anslinger’s legacy of lies and deceit lives on in 1999.

Our government owes an apology to all persons who spent jail or prison time for cannabis (14 million years in aggregate so far), had to go through the courts, had their education, families, and professions torn apart, and their lives, wealth, and health often destroyed.

We also owe an apology to honest-but-ignorant teachers, police, and judges for our lack of courage to speak up and educate them. But there is no apologizing for the profit-minded corporate and government leaders who have acted illegally to censor and refute the undeniable truth of hemp.

What Justice Demands

Justice demands nothing less than the lifting of all penalties (criminal and civil) and removal of all restraints upon the cultivation and use of both smoking and non-smoking uses of this, our most remarkable plant.

Prisoners being held for the peaceful possession, sale, transport, or cultivation of cannabis hemp must be released immediately. Money and property seized must be returned. Criminal records must be wiped clean, amnesty granted, and some sort of reparations paid for time served. These cannabis prisoners are the real victims of this monstrous crime called the "War on Drugs."

In the end, half measures will not be acceptable.

In the meantime, we must begin with a moratorium on hemp/marijuana law enforcement. And we most move swiftly to restore and expand the national archives and historical record on hemp and its multiplicity of valuable uses.

What You Can Do

We think, now that you’ve had a good look at our side and the government’s sideof this story (both as we see it and as the media projects it), you’ll want to join us in putting this issue onto the ballots and into the legislatures of this country, where everyone can express their opinions in the straight-forward manner set forth in our United States’ and individual state constitutions.

Teach hemp to everyone; talk about it all the time. Look for hemp products, ask for hemp buy hemp. Defend hemp. And use the information and suggestions included in the Appendix at the end of the paper version of this book. Purchase copies of the paper version of this book and the CD-ROM for you local public and school libraries.

At the risk of repetition, let us once more state in the strongest possible terms, that cannabis hemp indeed the plant we denigrate with the slang name marijuana will become known to future generations, as it was known to past generations for millenia, as the number-one annually renewable, fully sustainable, non pesticide-requiring, and most abundant source of paper/fiber/fuel on the face of the earth; with more overall uses than any other known plant.

In other words, cannabis hemp is the greatest plant on earth!

Write to your elected officials and the news media, to help create a more conscious political leadership and favorable news coverage on marijuana and hemp. Give credit for good votes and coverage, and complain about bad. Register and run for office. And always vote!!

Demand that our prisoners of conscience be freed, rewarded, and honored. They deserve to be welcomed home as heroes, and as P.O.W.s in this "War on Drugs," to receive veteran’s benefits and rights not the DEA or police.

Think of this:

If these outlaw citizens had not defend the government and preserved the hempseed, our government and its prohibitionist policies would have eradicated this plant from our Earth.

So, the heroes of this war are not William Bennett, Nancy Reagan, Bill Clinton, General Barry McCaffrey, the DEA, or DARE, but those who de÷ed them. These true heroes must have their lives and property returned. For defying these tyrannical laws, they must be remembered by each of us for all time. For they saved the seed that’s going to save the planet!

Hemp for Victory!

Let our people go. Let our people grow. And never allow our politicians again impose such fanatical prohibition laws against any natural substance in its natural form. We almost lost the seed and knowledge to save the planet.

Democracy doesn’t work ever unless it is honest.

And if the suppression of hemp is just one example of the many lies which American police/bureaucrats and prison guards have been blackmailing their theoretical bosses elected politicians and the public we are in big trouble!

We have reviewed this "drug war" against cannabis hemp/marijuana as thoroughly as we possibly could, and what we have seen sickens us. And only those with this knowledge of hemp, whose doors of perception have been cleansed, can kick the scumbags out and reclaim our freedoms, our planet, and our life-sustaining environment.

We therefore agree with the little boy from Hans Christian Andersens’s tale who, while watching the parade pass by, shouted with courageous innocence:

It should be noted that, even though 50-80% of all their displayed fibers for paper and cloth from their "Life in America: 1780s to the 1800s" exhibit and "American Maritime Exhibit, 1492-1850" were made of hemp, the Smithsonian Institution has removed all mention of cannabis hemp as it was used in paper, textiles, ropes, and sails, referring to it only as "other fibers" while cotton, wool, flax, sisal, jute, Manila hemp, etc. are specifically mentioned. Cotton was less than 1% of all fibers prior to 1800. Hemp was about 80% of all fibers.

Museum curator Arkadero’s response when questioned on this topic was that, "Children don’t need to know about hemp anymore, it confuses them," and the director of the Smithsonian said that even though hemp was the primary fiber, "We are not a fiber museum."

He did not mention how they had determined that children do need to know about the minor fiber crops in American history.

Were children’s innocent questions about hemp and marijuana making the Smithsonian tour guides uncomfortable?

And in a June 20, 1989, letter, Institution secretary Robert McCormic Adams wrote that, "We do not see a cataloging of fibers in early America as part of our task," in presenting these exhibits.

"At times this focus does lead curators to mention fabrics such as linen, wool or others."

He returned copies of this book and the U.S. government’s own 1942 pro-marijuana film, Hemp for Victory to us, apparently without reviewing any of the information.